Ever since the discovery of cyclodextrins, a family of cyclic oligosaccharides based on α (1 → 4) linkage among glucopyranose subunits, these versatile supramolecular hosts have received tremendous attention for scientific explorations. Due to their property of forming host-guest type inclusion complex, cyclodextrins and their synthetic derivatives exhibit wide range of utilities in different areas viz. pharmaceuticals, drug delivery systems, cosmetics, food and nutrition, textile and chemical industry etc. The purpose of this review is to highlight properties, advantages, recent studies and versatile benefits of cyclodextrins and to re-strengthen their prospective applications in novel directions for future research. This article summarizes a variety of applications of cyclodextrins in various industrial products, technologies, analytical and chemical processes and recent industrial advancements by extensively literature search on various scientific databases, Google and websites of various associated pharmaceutical industries and patenting authorities across the world. Due to possibility of multidimensional changes in physical and chemical properties of molecules upon inclusion complexation in cyclodextrins, these compounds are of great commercial interest and may offer solution to many of the scientific problems of the current world.

The process of drug discovery is very complex and requires an interdisciplinary effort to design effective and commercially feasible drugs. The objective of drug design is to find a chemical compound that can fit to a specific cavity on a protein target both geometrically and chemically. After passing the animal tests and human clinical trials, this compound becomes a drug available to patients. The conventional drug design methods include random screening of chemicals found in nature or synthesized in laboratories. The problems with this method are long design cycle and high cost. Modern approach including structure-based drug design with the help of informatic technologies and computational methods has speeded up the drug discovery process in an efficient manner. Remarkable progress has been made during the past five years in almost all the areas concerned with drug design and discovery. An improved generation of softwares with easy operation and superior computational tools to generate chemically stable and worthy compounds with refinement capability has been developed. These tools can tap into cheminformation to shorten the cycle of drug discovery, and thus make drug discovery more cost-effective. A complete overview of drug discovery process with comparison of conventional approaches of drug discovery is discussed here. Special emphasis is given on computational approaches for drug discovery along with salient features and applications of the softwares used in de novo drug designing.

Probiotics are friendly live microorganisms (in most cases, bacteria) that are similar to beneficial micro-organisms found in the human gut, whenever consumed, have potential to confer benefit to the health of consumers by maintaining, or improving their intestinal microbial flora and are available to consumers mainly in the form of dietary supplements and foods. All-time high interest in the field of probiotics is due to emerging probiotic industry. Probiotics are available in foods and dietary supplements, even as pharmaceutical formulations (capsules, tablets and powders) and in some other forms as well, but their claims of health benefits may challenge the traditional border between food and medicine. A number of probiotic products have been already introduced into the international market as food supplements, dietary supplements, natural health products, functional foods and many more other categories; as a result, the position of regulatory system for probiotics within existing categories become vague and quite unclear. Common terminology for probiotic products has become a necessity to achieve adequate regulatory control for discussion of probiotic-related issues among government, producers and consumers. The lack of a consistent terminology across the globe leads to legal uncertainty and confusion instead of being a direct obstacle for development of a mature market. This article will explain differences in regulatory categorizations across the globe; discuss the terms like food and drugs with a close relationship to probiotics, the problems associated with unsatisfactorily approached categorization as well as suggestive consolidations for the new categorization which will demarcate probiotics into categories explaining their nutritive claims, health claims or both.